Estimates for marketing expenditures for 2010 are in, and it looks like companies spent about $20 billion on PPC (that’s pay-per-click advertising, those results that show up on the top of your SERPs) this past year, and only about $2 billion on SEO (that is, on making sure their sites show up in organic search results). Now, we here at Marketplace Earth definitely recommend including PPC as part of your ecommerce business’s online marketing campaign. We always tailor our energies for any particular company’s online campaign to that specific company, which means sometimes more PPC, sometimes more SEO. However, the beginning of a new year seems like a good time for a reminder that SEO deserves a piece of the action.

Why should you invest in SEO as well as PPC? There are many articles out there on this very topic, and people have very strong opinions on both sides. But here are just a couple reasons why you shouldn’t neglect SEO. For one thing, as soon as you stop paying for PPC, your links die. With SEO, on the other hand, even when you stop paying for new links and new SEO work on your site, the old work remains in place and continues to help you rank well. Secondly, about 80% of all clicks on search results go to organic search results, rather than to paid ads. So while paying for SERP placement will guarantee you a place on the top of that results page, it won’t by any means guarantee that anyone will click on your ad.

If you’d like more info on why to consider SEO in your marketing campaigns, please contact us and take a look at our site’s info on our custom SEO services. You can also take a look at another recent post, SEO and PPC: A Love/Hate Relationship.